What sparked your interest in wanting to make a documentary about Liberia?

The fact that the newly elected president of Liberia was a woman was notable, especially since the continent had had so few women in leadership, and that women had been so peculiarly and sadistically targeted during their war. I knew there had to be a backstory. She hadn't just arisen spontaneously.

How were Christian and Muslim women able to come together for a common cause?

They were all so completely fed up with war that they were willing to overcome their reluctance. There was some mistrust at first, but the longer they spent time together in prayer and fasting the more they came to understand and empathize with each other. Friendships were forged on the field that will exist for a long time—it is quite possible that the nature of the relationship between Christian and Muslim was forever changed in Liberia.

Elaborate on the role that religious leaders played in helping to bring about peace to Liberia.

While it may seem unlikely, the fact is that the warlords and even Charles Taylor were quite religious. Religious leaders therefore were among the only people who could influence them, even in the chaotic atmosphere of war. But women were dissatisfied with the limited way in which the religious leaders wielded that influence. So the campaign really began with the women bringing pressure on the leaders via their religious confidants. This pressure ultimately was one of the reasons Taylor and the rebels decided to come to peace talks in Ghana.

How did prayer inform these women's social justice actions?

All of the women in this film were deeply, deeply religious and believed with all of their hearts and minds in the power of prayer to influence events and people. This was a critical aspect of their plan, and a big part of what made them so tenacious and persistent in their protests. But more than this, prayer was a source of personal strength to each of the women. They gained strength through their individual practice of prayer, but also the communal practice of prayer was an extraordinary glue that held the group together in spite of all kinds of pressures to pull them apart.

Explain the significance of the Lutheran church that you filmed for this documentary.

St. Peter's Lutheran Church was the scene of the first organizing meeting for the Christian Women's Peace Initiative, early in the film. In 1989, however, that church was also the scene of one of the most horrific massacres in the pre-war period. Samuel Doe's army, in anticipation of Charles Taylor's assault on Monrovia, went into the church and slaughtered more than 600 members of a rival ethnic group in a single night. The candlelight vigil in the middle of the film takes place on the church compound on top of the mass grave that contains most of those bodies. The church was and still is the church that Leymah Gbowee attended, and a source of great strength and counsel to her. It was also through the Lutheran Church that WIPNET, her organization, got offices and also got its first international donations.

Why is Leymah Gbowee the focal character of your story?

Everyone acknowledged her to be the leader and the face of the peace movement. But more than this, Leymah was so clearly charismatic, articulate, and genuine that I knew that a film with her at the center could not fail to be compelling. She is one of the most gifted people I have ever met.

What can we do to enable this change to continue without imposing our Western values on this culture?

I think you are precisely right here. Why do we insist on imposing "solutions" that are always at best temporary, and at worst impractical and even disrespectful to indigenous cultures? I think at heart we are sometimes deeply mistrustful of the competence of indigenous cultures to find their own answers. And when we impose programs, very often we do so in such a manner as to set them hunting for external money that is scarce, inadequate, and hard to get. The answer is to do some better listening. As people coming in from the global North we need to arrive in places with a little less confidence in our "answers" and a little more confidence in the people we are there to serve. People aren't poor because they don't have values, don't have smarts, don't have gumption—people are poor because they don't have money. We need to recognize that most of the "resources" needed to fight the world's problems are also the victims of those problems.

What's been the response when you've shown this film?

The response has been overwhelmingly emotional, connected, and positive. And this is not just from people in the U.S. We have already shown the film in many countries to women's groups and the response has been so moving. Women in Iraq wept when they saw it, and immediately asked how many copies they could make so as to make sure that it is shown in people's homes all over the country. Women from Sudan e-mailed us to say that they felt sure that lives were being changed by the dialogues the film had sparked. In Tblisi, Georgia, women sat down immediately after the film and wrote up a Peace Agenda that is now making its way around the country for women's signatures. What is remarkable is the way that so many women were already poised to work together for peace—all the film does is remind them how powerful they are when they work together. It is a spark of faith in dark times.

What are the future plans for this documentary and how can interested churches and nonprofits arrange for showings of this film?

We hope to work with churches and other religious organizations along with youth groups, women's organizations, and other interested partners to get the film seen far and wide. At the moment we are still forming distribution plans, but churches that are interested in seeing the film should go to our Web site and give us their information so that when we are set up for distribution we can get in touch with them.

Becky Garrison was cited by Publishers Weekly as one of  "four evangelicals with fresh views," alongside Jim Wallis, Shane Claiborne, and Ron Sider.

- Kathleen Norris
Amazing Grace

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Tickle calls our present historical moment (read: the last 100 years) "Emerging Christianity." (This is not precisely the same thing as the self-identified "emergent church" networks, but there may be similar characteristics.) Historically, these great emergences are sometimes symbolized by a rose blooming forth from the rubble.

"Emerging or emergent Christianity is the new form of Christianity that will serve the whole of the Great Emergence in the same way that Protestantism served the Great Reformation," she said.

Emerging Christianity, posits Tickle, brings together – rather than divides - the best practices of the Christian traditions, practices that have been divided in the church and held within denominations for 500 years. It also looks back at ancient church practices and tries to apply them in fresh ways in the post-modern era.

Brian McLaren's newest book Finding Our Way Again: The Return of the Ancient Practices, also examines Emerging Christianity as a "way of life" rather than a "set of beliefs." McLaren reclaims ancient Christian spiritual practices -- fixed-hour prayer, fasting, observing the Sabbath -- for use today. Dallas Willard has been playing with this same idea in his call to move the Christian church away from "sin management" and toward "discipleship" (see The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God).

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams took up a similar theme in an April lecture titled The Spiritual and the Religious: Is the Territory Changing?

Williams opens his remarks by quoting U2's Bono: "I'm not into religion. I am completely anti-religious. Religion is a term for a collection, a denomination. I am interested in personal experience of God."

Williams brilliantly unpacks the "spiritual, not religious" conundrum:

The Christian alternative to the post-religious spirituality outlined earlier is not simply "religion" as some sort of intellectual and moral system, but the corporately experienced reality of the kingdom, the space that has been cleared in human imagination and self-understanding by the revealing events of Jesus' life.

 … Faced with the claims of non-dogmatic spirituality, the believer should not be insisting anxiously on the need for compliance with a set of definite propositions; he or she should be asking whether what happens when the Assembly meets to adore God and lay itself open to his action looks at all like a new and transforming environment, in which human beings are radically changed.

I've been at Sojourners for 22 years. At its best, Sojourners (in all its manifestations as ministry, Christian intentional community, church, magazine, Christian communications nexus, movement mobilizer, etc.) has been an experiment in Emerging Christianity.

We are evangelical in our roots and ecumenical in our expression—drawing on the best of Christian practices that are held denominationally. For example, when we are operating at our best, we try to take scripture as seriously as Protestants, understand communion as deeply as Catholics, rely on the Spirit as passionately as Pentecostals, preach a prophetic word of good news as zealously as evangelicals, and live a contemplative life rooted in the ever-present Imago Dei as humbly as Orthodox.

As a cluster of Christians, we strive to practice "open-source" spiritual leadership, or "priesthood of all believers," or authority rooted in gifts of the Spirit. Additionally, we understand following Jesus as a "way of life"—the Tao of Jesus, the Jesus Road. This "way of life" leads us also to take the doctrinal teachings of the church very seriously -- because we've lived them, not (necessarily) because we signed a contractual arrangement or took a loyalty oath with the church.

I'm grateful to Phyllis Tickle, Brian McLaren, Archbishop Rowan, Karen Ward, the New Monastics, and others who are keeping our rosebush tended.

As the 15th-century hymn celebrates, "Lo, how a Rose e're blooming from tender stem hath sprung!"

Rose Marie Berger, a Sojourners associate editor, is a Catholic peace activist and poet.

- Romans 8:1-2

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- Robert Jewett
Jesus Against the Rapture

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But other studies show that when you ask people what they think about Jesus, you get answers like: compassionate, loving, caring, hung out with sinners and poor people, for peace. We have a serious image problem. People think that we should stand for the same things as Jesus did. So it's time to change the image.

A substantial group of evangelical leaders are trying to do just that. This morning, a new statement, An Evangelical Manifesto: A Declaration of Evangelical Identity and Public Commitment, was released in Washington, D.C. The statement has two purposes - to address the confusion about who evangelicals are and to clarify a view on evangelicals in public life.

On the first point, the manifesto says:

Our first task is to reaffirm who we are. Evangelicals are Christians who define themselves, their faith, and their lives according to the Good News of Jesus of Nazareth. (Evangelical comes from the Greek word for good news, or gospel.) Believing that the Gospel of Jesus is God's good news for the whole world, we affirm with the Apostle Paul that we are "not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation." Contrary to widespread misunderstanding today, we Evangelicals should be defined theologically, and not politically, socially, or culturally.

It then goes on to identify seven "beliefs that we consider to be at the heart of the message of Jesus and therefore foundational for us." They are primarily theological affirmations, including:

We believe that being disciples of Jesus means serving him as Lord in every sphere of our lives, secular as well as spiritual, public as well as private, in deeds as well as words, and in every moment of our days on earth, always reaching out as he did to those who are lost as well as to the poor, the sick, the hungry, the oppressed, the socially despised, and being faithful stewards of creation and our fellow creatures.

On the question of public life, the manifesto recognizes that the political categories of left and right simply don't fit religion, and it is a big mistake to try to fit religion into them. The people I meet across the country are yearning for a moral center to our public life and political discourse, with a fundamental emphasis on the common good. They want to understand better the moral choices and challenges that lie beneath our political debates. More and more people want to see a common-good politics replace the politics of individual gain and special interests.

The manifesto affirms that:

We must find a new understanding of our place in public life. We affirm that to be Evangelical and to carry the name of Christ is to seek to be faithful to the freedom, justice, peace, and well-being that are at the heart of the kingdom of God, to bring these gifts into public life as a service to all, and to work with all who share these ideals and care for the common good. Citizens of the City of God, we are resident aliens in the Earthly City. Called by Jesus to be "in" the world but "not of" the world, we are fully engaged in public affairs, but never completely equated with any party, partisan ideology, economic system, class, tribe, or national identity.

I very much affirm the views expressed in the manifesto and was happy to accept an invitation to be one of the charter signatories. Click here to read the statement, a helpful study guide, and to see who the charter signatories are.

Tandi,
Kotwa, Mudzi North province:

Four of us were walking together and we saw the ZanuPF Youth approaching. We ran but they caught me and forced me to the water. "You have to surrender your information to us. You are a son of ZanuPF. We baptize you in the name of ZanuPF."

I was drowning. My mind started to go dark as I prayed to God. I do not know what happened but suddenly the men holding me under the water were gone and my feet found the ground. I lay on the bank of the river coughing and choking. My friends found me and took me to Harare in a man’s car.

We are punished because we do not accept ZanuPF as God. This is why we are punished. Many days in a row we go without food. Sometimes we are forced to drink standing water. They take. They burn Zimbabwe. We are dying.

Studies are showing that warfare brings significantly increased incidents of rape and domestic violence. Soldiers are taught violence in war and that violence is then turned upon innocent civilians in the country of conflict, fellow soldiers during wartime, or it returns home in the form of spousal and child abuse. Think the war is taking place thousands of miles away? Think again. Wartime violence is happening in living rooms across the country.

Americans may remember the four women murdered by their military husbands within a six-week period at Fort Bragg army base in North Carolina near the beginning of the Afghanistan invasion. While this caught the media's eye for a brief time, the violence at the hands of military personnel continues to rise.

A 2003 study financed by the Department of Defense found that nearly one-third of female veterans who sought health care through the Veterans Affairs reported that during their military service they experienced rape or attempted rape. Another set of figures from 2004 and 2005 showed a 40% increase in the number of sexual assaults reported by female soldiers—which may mean women feel safer in reporting the attacks or that the numbers are on the rise.

60 Minutes did research in the 1990s that found that domestic violence was five times more common in U.S. military families than civilian families. And that was during "peace time." During war, the numbers become far more gruesome. During the Rwandan genocide, UNICEF estimates 150,000 women were raped in the 100 days of conflict. Today, the remnants of that violence have ventured into the Congo and 27,000 sexual assaults were reported there by the United Nations -- in just one year, in just one province.

So, arise, then, women of this day! Forget the french toast. Forget the flowers. Arise and speak out against war. Spend this Mother's Day writing letters, calling congress, or finding another way to help stop the war. It is just a few hours of your life. And you might just end up saving one.

Nicole Sotelo is author of Women Healing from Abuse: Meditations for Finding Peace (Paulist Press) and is a contributor to Weep Not for Your Children: Essays on Religion and Violence, edited by Rosemary Radford Ruether and Lisa Isherwood (forthcoming from Equinox Publishing). She holds a master's degree from Harvard Divinity School and does workshops and retreats for Christian women healing from abuse. To learn more, visit www.womenhealing.com

Psalms 5:1-3

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Anger and Personal Power

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An attractive feature of this parable is that it sets a really low bar for divine commendation. The manager doesn't have sense enough to stay out of trouble to begin with. What's more, even after he has his "friends are friends forever" epiphany, he starts backsliding almost at once: He quickly gives his master's first debtor a 50% markdown, but for debtor number two the manager gets pointlessly stingy and only takes off 20%. He still gets praise for knowing what side his bread is buttered on.

And, because the kingdom of God is so often about taking things way over the top, the final verses go on to radically redefine what honesty and faithfulness are. Good stewardship is supposed to be about accurate accounting and careful saving, right? Not here. Money is inherently "dishonest," and impromptu unauthorized debt forgiveness is "faithfulness." (In fact, the master fires the manager before even seeing his accounting - the grounds for dismissal appear to have been less fiscal irresponsibility and more that he made enemies willing to accuse him).

The Protestant Work Ethic is not invited to this party, and you can virtually hear the groans of the prodigal son's responsible brother if he happens to look ahead from his seat in chapter 15.

Despite this parable, other parts of the Bible suggest to me that it's reasonable to save something for retirement. But I want to combine this conventional form of stewardship with long-view social accounting, which is why I'm excited about the special Web extra to our May issue about faith and finances. In it, my colleague Julie has accumulated a heaping helping of Web sites that can help you figure out how and where to invest retirement savings for the common good (and also where to free your mind with Bible study, teach your teenage kids about money, and plan - and pray over - your household budget).

Check it out – and e-mail it to a friend to share the abundance!

Elizabeth Palmberg is an assistant editor of Sojourners.

In an ironic twist of fate, when I arrived in Jerusalem I learned that Condoleezza Rice, her entourage, and I would be staying at the same hotel. For the next three days, a slew of black SUVs headed off to the West Bank while I toured the sacred spots in Jerusalem and nearby Bethlehem. By now, I had gotten accustomed to armed soldiers parading around the sacred spots of Israel. Still, every time I saw guns in the hotel lobby or had to pass through a rather intense security check just so I could go to my hotel room, the clash of empires hit me in the gut.

Earlier last month, I was able to attend a press screening for the James Carroll documentary Constantine's Sword. In this film, Carroll takes the audience on a visceral and visual tour, noting those points in history -- starting with the reign of Constantine -- where Christianity melded with the political empire. (Those looking to delve further into this issue can check out Abraham's Curse: The Roots of Violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Constantine's Bible: Politics and the Making of the New Testament, and When Religion Becomes Evil: Five Warning Signs.)

Lest anyone think such actions are a thing of the past, several documentaries I just saw at the Tribeca Film Festival serve as visceral reminders of the ensuing carnage that still happens when the church becomes too closely aligned with the state. I sat through Milosevic on Trial, transfixed as the trial and excerpts from the graphic video and photographs that were introduced as evidence unfolded before my eyes. One montage I cannot get out of my mind involved snippets from a ceremony in which an Orthodox priest blesses the Scorpions, followed by a brutal sequence of atrocities committed by this Serbian paramilitary group. Also, in Standard Operating Procedure, Errol Morris highlights the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse through interviews and gripping photographs. While I'm aware that Morris has come under some criticism for paying for his interviews, the intensity of seeing this array of photos almost brought me to tears.

However, I found a glimmer of gospel hope in Pray the Devil Back to Hell. This documentary tells a compelling story of how Christian and Muslim women of Liberia joined forces to combat the violent warlords and the corrupt Charles Taylor regime. During a press conference, I learned from Leymah Gbowee, the leader of this movement, that Roman Catholic bishop and former president of the Liberian Council of Churches Michael K. Francis became her spiritual rock. The behind-the-scenes prophetic presence of Francis and other religious leaders gave these women the faith fuel they needed to walk the walk.

Armed with white T-shirts, the power of prayer, and their Bibles and Qurans, these women won a long-awaited peace that led to the election of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa's first elected female head of state and Liberia's first elected female president. In one scene that had the audience cheering, these women barricaded the site of the stalled peace talks in Ghana. The men could not leave the room even to eat until they drafted a workable peace plan. When the guards tried to arrest these women, they evoked the most powerful nonviolent weapon in their arsenal by threatening to remove their clothes. This strategy worked, as the guards chose not to bring shame upon themselves by forcing the women to expose their naked bodies. The women kept their clothes on but they also kept their promise that if need be, "they'll be back."

When I saw the trailer for Jamie Moffett's documentary The Ordinary Radicals, I caught other glimpses of the kingdom of heaven here on earth. I know that the radical words of Jesus can empower ordinary citizens here in the U.S. to transform their own communities because I've seen it in action. The Everything Must Change weekend with Brian made me realize the urgency of the global need for us to set aside our denominational differences and work together as the body of Christ to bring forth God's kingdom into the world. That's why I'm joining forces with Shane Claiborne, Chris Haw, and others to support Jesus for President.

Becky Garrison was cited by Publishers Weekly as one of  "four evangelicals with fresh views," alongside Jim Wallis, Shane Claiborne, and Ron Sider.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Meditations on the Cross

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- Romans 5:6-8

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Morgan Tswangirayi 47.9%
Mugabe 43.2%
Makoni 8.3%
Langton .6%

It appears that no candidate has won and that a rerun is inevitable. There are widespread concerns about the integrity of the election process. Although the opposition has reservations about the results, they have been placed in a difficult position. If they boycott the rerun, then the government will be declared winners. However, the ongoing post-election violence against opposition members has created a situation in which it is impossible for there to be free and fair elections. Another perspective that has been offered to explain the post-election violence is that it could be a ploy to intimidate the opposition from participating in the rerun so that the government could be declared winners by default. Either way, the use of violence as a weapon to thwart democracy and freedom should not be tolerated. The international community must act to ensure that the values of democracy and freedom are upheld in Zimbabwe. The denial of freedom and democracy to one nation is the denial of these values in all nations. Your prayers and support are deeply appreciated. Thank you.

Nontando Hadebe, a former Sojourners intern, is originally from Zimbabwe and is now pursuing graduate studies in theology in South Africa.

As a Christian liberal arts college in northern Indiana that is rooted in the Anabaptist-Mennonite tradition of peacemaking, global citizenship, and servant leadership, we at Goshen College have been much more apt to be skeptical and cynical about partisan politics. But I am seeing an enthusiasm on our college campus for this election like never before, and even a sense of awe that our voice is desired to be heard. We have just launched a Web site (www.goshen.edu/election2008) focused on faith and politics, with various perspectives from members of our campus community.

Such an enthusiasm for voting hasn't always been the case among Mennonites who have often lagged behind other citizens at the voting booth, reluctance partly due to a history of persecution by governments, opposition to warfare and military service, and a commitment to Christ over country. Ours has always been a conscience and values-based approach – one we believe, now more than ever, has value for the world.

Voting our conscience is a privilege rooted in Christian scripture. The Apostle Paul, a Roman citizen, outlined this principle in 1 Corinthians 14:29-30: "Let two or three prophets speak; and let the others weigh what is said. If a revelation is made to someone sitting nearby (in the gathered congregation), let the first person be silent. For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged."

In this passage lies one of the central principles of the Protestant Reformation: the right to dissent, the right to express one's opinion, the right for a community to decide for themselves, and in this case, how to relate to the medieval theocratic church-state establishment.

A small group of Christian university students called Anabaptists/Mennonites used these principles to demand the freedom of individuals to assemble voluntarily and decide together what the will of the community was to be. Roman Catholic leaders and most Protestant Reformers couldn't accept such radical notions of "free choice" in worship and life, even the absolute right not to believe, and the total separation of church and state.

I pause every time I hear politicians and others claiming that our God-given right to vote freely has been "won" by soldiers on the battlefield fighting and killing others for these freedoms. I pause because 480 years ago, it was these nonviolent Christ-followers who believed that in order for complete freedom of expression to be truly free, those opinions had to be formed in an environment without coercion. Some 250 years before it came to be enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and accepted by nearly every Western democracy since, the idea of separation of church and state and freely voicing one's conscience was defended through martyrdom by these early Mennonites. These early Christ-followers refused to kill for a right that they believed was given to them by God as stated in scripture.

I will vote my conscience in the May 6 primary and in the Nov. 4 general election, not because my vote may ultimately matter, though it might. I will vote my conscience, not because that vote has been secured by violence. Rather, I will vote based on Goshen College's Christ-centered core values of compassionate peacemaking, passionate learning, global citizenship, and servant leadership. And I will vote my conscience in solidarity with my Anabaptist/Mennonite foreparents who thought such a freely expressed vote of conscience was in keeping with biblical precedent and died defending that God-inspired principle.

As U.S. citizens, we may not always be sure whether to vote Democratic or Republican, but we should in every case vote our conscience. And in this election, I believe those who do will help create a better world.

Dr. James E. Brenneman is an Old Testament scholar and the president of Goshen College, a Mennonite college in Indiana. Brenneman, who has a Ph.D. from Claremont Graduate University, spent 25 years in Los Angeles as a pastor with an interest in ecumenical conversations before returning to Goshen College as president in 2006.

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With the wryest of humor, Blue contextualizes the two men walking the road to Emmaus, which may be tantamount to saying they were heading nowhere fast, considering scholars haven't been able to confirm the existence of an actual town named Emmaus. (What an amazing metaphor for our despair in the face of suffering, and the difficulty of being reconciled to each other and God afterwards.) The two men meet a stranger along the way who asks them why they are aggrieved. Their response is to almost reprimand the stranger's cluelessness: "Do you not know what happened this weekend. We lost hope." To which the stranger replies with reciprocal exasperation, "Did you not know that the whole story has been driving toward this irredeemable act of shared suffering—the death of God—so that the unprecedented hope of resurrection might come?"

Blue says it this way:

Jesus is like, 'Fools and slow of hear to believe. Can't you see that this all had to happen: that the mechanisms of the social order that lead to violence had to be undone, the self-deceptive and ferocious need to make ourselves out as innocent, the rat race, the ladder climbing, the fear of a violent God who demands blood and vengeance? Can't you see that all that had to be undone? You're free! Quit holding onto the bars and rattling them. The cage doors are open; walk out.' Jesus comes back from a wholly different place than they've ever been, and he walks right up to them and he reveals a whole new story. [Yet they don't recognize it.]

He walks with them, and they stop just shy of nowhere. And Jesus doesn't lecture them, judge them, condemn them, dislike them. He doesn't express a sense of betrayal and disappointment. He doesn't talk about how hopeless and ugly the whole lot of humanity is. He breaks bread. And he feeds them. And he tells them to go out and preach mercy to the world.

He becomes present to these people, people totally caught up, as we all are, in the reigning social, political and economic structures, in order to help them see or live or feel an alternative—to help them die and live again. He becomes present so that little by little they will be enabled to walk out of the cages… So that they might be able to tell new stories instead of the same old predictable stories…

The bread has been broken and the bread's been blessed. It may not seem like it, but we're free to get off the road and eat.

Ehrman and Wright may have very different ideas of what suffering in life means and address it with different hopes of what is to come. But like Brian McLaren, I too am immensely glad both men have entered into dialogue—giving us a beautiful example of how to jump off the road to Emmaus, share a meal with a stranger and write new, life-giving stories together.

Melvin Bray is a devoted husband, committed father, learner, teacher, writer, storyteller, lover of people, connoisseur of creativity, seeker of justice, purveyor of sustainability and believer in possibilities. As founder of Kid Cultivators, he lives, loves, works and dreams with friends in Atlanta, Georgia.

- Jeremiah 5:26-28

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- Julian of Norwich

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It is a day to commemorate the more than 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis from 1938-1945. It is a day to reflect on the fact that when the rest of the world knew what was happening, too little was done to stop it. And, it is a day to reflect on contemporary genocides, such as Darfur, and redouble our efforts to ensure that "never again" becomes a reality.

Several years ago, the Conservative Jewish movement produced the first formal liturgy for the day, titled " Megillat Hashoah"--"The Scroll of the Holocaust." The scroll is described as

… built largely around first-person testimonies. After an opening chapter that gives a searing overview of the victims' suffering, it offers composite sketches of a Christian journalist observing life in the Warsaw Ghetto, a Jewish woman in a work camp, and a Jewish youth who was forced to pull out the teeth from his brother's corpse and shove other dead bodies into ovens. A fifth chapter consists of a eulogy for those who died in the Holocaust; the final chapter recounts the efforts to rebuild Jewish life after the war ended.

It is also intended to address some of the theological questions raised by the Holocaust.

The overriding theological message of the Megillah [Scroll] is that human beings have a right to question the divine, but they cannot expect answers --and that even without answers, the Jewish faith in God endures. The Megillah ends with the exhortation: "Do not mourn too much, but do not sink into the forgetfulness of apathy. Do not allow days of darkness to return; weep, but wipe the tears away. Do not absolve and do not exonerate, do not attempt to understand. Learn to live without an answer. Through our blood, live!"

Today, we remember, we mourn, we reflect, but we will not "sink into the forgetfulness of apathy." We renew the vow, Never Again.

Duane Shank is the senior policy adviser at Sojourners.]]> http://blog.beliefnet.com/godspolitics/2008/05/never-again-by-duane-shank.html http://blog.beliefnet.com/godspolitics/2008/05/never-again-by-duane-shank.html Human Rights Holocaust Holocaust Memorial Day Jews Yom Hashoah Thu, 01 May 2008 12:09:46 -0500